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Chapter 9

Political Parties

Figure 9.1 The families of the 2012 presidential candidates joined in the festivities at the Democratic NationalConvention in Charlotte, North Carolina, (left) and the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida (right).(credit right: modification of work by “PBS NewsHour”/Flickr)

Chapter Outline

9.1 What Are Parties and How Did They Form?

9.2 The Two-Party System

9.3 The Shape of Modern Political Parties

9.4 Divided Government and Partisan Polarization

Introduction

In 2012, Barack Obama accepted his second nomination to lead the Democratic Party into the presidentialelection (Figure 9.1). During his first term, he had been attacked by pundits for his failure to convincecongressional Republicans to work with him. Despite that, he was wildly popular in his own party, andvoters reelected him by a comfortable margin. His second term seemed to go no better, however, withdisagreements between the parties resulting in government shutdowns and the threat of credit defaults.Yet just a few decades ago, then-president Dwight D. Eisenhower was criticized for failing to create a clearvision for his Republican Party, and Congress was lampooned for what was deemed a lack of real conflictover important issues. Political parties, it seems, can never get it right—they are either too polarizing ortoo noncommittal.

While people love to criticize political parties, the reality is that the modern political system could not existwithout them. This chapter will explore why the party system may be the most important component ofany true democracy. What are political parties? Why do they form, and why has the United States typicallyhad only two? Why have political parties become so highly structured? Finally, why does it seem thatparties today are more polarized than they have been in the past?

Chapter 9 | Political Parties 325

9.1 What Are Parties and How Did They Form?

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:• Describe political parties and what they do• Differentiate political parties from interest groups• Explain how U.S. political parties formed

At some point, most of us have found ourselves part of a group trying to solve a problem, like pickinga restaurant or movie to attend, or completing a big project at school or work. Members of the groupprobably had various opinions about what should be done. Some may have even refused to help makethe decision or to follow it once it had been made. Still others may have been willing to follow along butwere less interested in contributing to a workable solution. Because of this disagreement, at some point,someone in the group had to find a way to make a decision, negotiate a compromise, and ultimately dothe work needed for the group to accomplish its goals.

This kind of collective action problem is very common in societies, as groups and entire societies try tosolve problems or distribute scarce resources. In modern U.S. politics, such problems are usually solved bytwo important types of organizations: interest groups and political parties. There are many interest groups,all with opinions about what should be done and a desire to influence policy. Because they are usually notofficially affiliated with any political party, they generally have no trouble working with either of the majorparties. But at some point, a society must find a way of taking all these opinions and turning them intosolutions to real problems. That is where political parties come in. Essentially, political parties are groupsof people with similar interests who work together to create and implement policies. They do this bygaining control over the government by winning elections. Party platforms guide members of Congress indrafting legislation. Parties guide proposed laws through Congress and inform party members how theyshould vote on important issues. Political parties also nominate candidates to run for state government,Congress, and the presidency. Finally, they coordinate political campaigns and mobilize voters.

POLITICAL PARTIES AS UNIQUE ORGANIZATIONS

In Federalist No. 10, written in the late eighteenth century, James Madison noted that the formation ofself-interested groups, which he called factions, was inevitable in any society, as individuals started towork together to protect themselves from the government. Interest groups and political parties are twoof the most easily identified forms of factions in the United States. These groups are similar in that theyare both mediating institutions responsible for communicating public preferences to the government.They are not themselves government institutions in a formal sense. Neither is directly mentioned in theU.S. Constitution nor do they have any real, legal authority to influence policy. But whereas interestgroups often work indirectly to influence our leaders, political parties are organizations that try to directlyinfluence public policy through its members who seek to win and hold public office. Parties accomplishthis by identifying and aligning sets of issues that are important to voters in the hopes of gaining supportduring elections; their positions on these critical issues are often presented in documents known as a partyplatform (Figure 9.2), which is adopted at each party’s presidential nominating convention every fouryears. If successful, a party can create a large enough electoral coalition to gain control of the government.Once in power, the party is then able to deliver, to its voters and elites, the policy preferences theychoose by electing its partisans to the government. In this respect, parties provide choices to the electorate,something they are doing that is in such sharp contrast to their opposition.

326 Chapter 9 | Political Parties

This OpenStax book is available for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11995/1.12

Figure 9.2 The party platform adopted at the first national convention of the Progressive Party in 1912. Among otheritems, this platform called for disclosure requirements for campaign contributions, an eight-hour workday, a federalincome tax, and women’s suffrage.

You can read the full platform of the Republican Party(https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29gopplatform) and the Democratic Party(https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29demplatform) at their respective websites.

Winning elections and implementing policy would be hard enough in simple political systems, but ina country as complex as the United States, political parties must take on great responsibilities to winelections and coordinate behavior across the many local, state, and national governing bodies. Indeed,political differences between states and local areas can contribute much complexity. If a party stakes outissue positions on which few people agree and therefore builds too narrow a coalition of voter support,that party may find itself marginalized. But if the party takes too broad a position on issues, it might finditself in a situation where the members of the party disagree with one another, making it difficult to passlegislation, even if the party can secure victory.

It should come as no surprise that the story of U.S. political parties largely mirrors the story of the UnitedStates itself. The United States has seen sweeping changes to its size, its relative power, and its social anddemographic composition. These changes have been mirrored by the political parties as they have soughtto shift their coalitions to establish and maintain power across the nation and as party leadership haschanged. As you will learn later, this also means that the structure and behavior of modern parties largelyparallel the social, demographic, and geographic divisions within the United States today. To understandhow this has happened, we look at the origins of the U.S. party system.

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https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29gopplatform

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29gopplatform

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29demplatform

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29demplatform

HOW POLITICAL PARTIES FORMED

National political parties as we understand them today did not really exist in the United States duringthe early years of the republic. Most politics during the time of the nation’s founding were local in natureand based on elite politics, limited suffrage (or the ability to vote in elections), and property ownership.Residents of the various colonies, and later of the various states, were far more interested in events in theirstate legislatures than in those occurring at the national level or later in the nation’s capital. To the extentthat national issues did exist, they were largely limited to collective security efforts to deal with externalrivals, such as the British or the French, and with perceived internal threats, such as conflicts with NativeAmericans.

Soon after the United States emerged from the Revolutionary War, however, a rift began to emergebetween two groups that had very different views about the future direction of U.S. politics. Thus, fromthe very beginning of its history, the United States has had a system of government dominated bytwo different philosophies. Federalists, who were largely responsible for drafting and ratifying the U.S.Constitution, generally favored the idea of a stronger, more centralized republic that had greater controlover regulating the economy.1 Anti-Federalists preferred a more confederate system built on state equalityand autonomy.2 The Federalist faction, led by Alexander Hamilton, largely dominated the government inthe years immediately after the Constitution was ratified. Included in the Federalists was President GeorgeWashington, who was initially against the existence of parties in the United States. When Washingtondecided to exit politics and leave office, he warned of the potential negative effects of parties in hisfarewell address to the nation, including their potentially divisive nature and the fact that they might notalways focus on the common good but rather on partisan ends. However, members of each faction quicklyrealized that they had a vested interest not only in nominating and electing a president who shared theirviews, but also in winning other elections. Two loosely affiliated party coalitions, known as the Federalistsand the Democratic-Republicans, soon emerged. The Federalists succeeded in electing their first leader,John Adams, to the presidency in 1796, only to see the Democratic-Republicans gain victory under ThomasJefferson four years later in 1800.



The “Revolution of 1800”: Uniting the Executive Branch under One Party

When the U.S. Constitution was drafted, its authors were certainly aware that political parties existed in othercountries (like Great Britain), but they hoped to avoid them in the United States. They felt the importance ofstates in the U.S. federal structure would make it difficult for national parties to form. They also hoped thathaving a college of electors vote for the executive branch, with the top two vote-getters becoming presidentand vice president, would discourage the formation of parties. Their system worked for the first two presidentialelections, when essentially all the electors voted for George Washington to serve as president. But by 1796,the Federalist and Anti-Federalist camps had organized into electoral coalitions. The Anti-Federalists joinedwith many others active in the process to become known as the Democratic-Republicans. The Federalist JohnAdams won the Electoral College vote, but his authority was undermined when the vice presidency went toDemocratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, who finished second. Four years later, the Democratic-Republicansmanaged to avoid this outcome by coordinating the electors to vote for their top two candidates. But when thevote ended in a tie, it was ultimately left to Congress to decide who would be the third president of the UnitedStates (Figure 9.3).

Figure 9.3 Thomas Jefferson almost lost the presidential election of 1800 to his own running mate when aflaw in the design of the Electoral College led to a tie that had to be resolved by Congress.

In an effort to prevent a similar outcome in the future, Congress and the states voted to ratify the TwelfthAmendment, which went into effect in 1804. This amendment changed the rules so that the president and vicepresident would be selected through separate elections within the Electoral College, and it altered the methodthat Congress used to fill the offices in the event that no candidate won a majority. The amendment essentiallyendorsed the new party system and helped prevent future controversies. It also served as an early effort bythe two parties to collude to make it harder for an outsider to win the presidency.

Does the process of selecting the executive branch need to be reformed so that the people elect the presidentand vice president directly, rather than through the Electoral College? Should the people vote separately oneach office rather than voting for both at the same time? Explain your reasoning.

Growing regional tensions eroded the Federalist Party’s ability to coordinate elites, and it eventuallycollapsed following its opposition to the War of 1812.3 The Democratic-Republican Party, on the otherhand, eventually divided over whether national resources should be focused on economic and mercantiledevelopment, such as tariffs on imported goods and government funding of internal improvements likeroads and canals, or on promoting populist issues that would help the “common man,” such as reducingor eliminating state property requirements that had prevented many men from voting.4

Milestone


In the election of 1824, numerous candidates contended for the presidency, all members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Andrew Jackson won more popular votes and more votes in the Electoral College thanany other candidate. However, because he did not win the majority (more than half) of the availableelectoral votes, the election was decided by the House of Representatives, as required by the TwelfthAmendment. The Twelfth Amendment limited the House’s choice to the three candidates with the greatestnumber of electoral votes. Thus, Andrew Jackson, with 99 electoral votes, found himself in competitionwith only John Quincy Adams, the second place finisher with 84 electoral votes, and William H. Crawford,who had come in third with 41. The fourth-place finisher, Henry Clay, who was no longer in contention,had won 37 electoral votes. Clay strongly disliked Jackson, and his ideas on government support for tariffsand internal improvements were similar to those of Adams. Clay thus gave his support to Adams, whowas chosen on the first ballot. Jackson considered the actions of Clay and Adams, the son of the Federalistpresident John Adams, to be an unjust triumph of supporters of the elite and referred to it as “the corruptbargain.”5

This marked the beginning of what historians call the Second Party System (the first parties had beenthe Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans), with the splitting of the Democratic-Republicans andthe formation of two new political parties. One half, called simply the Democratic Party, was the partyof Jackson; it continued to advocate for the common people by championing westward expansion andopposing a national bank. The branch of the Democratic-Republicans that believed that the nationalgovernment should encourage economic (primarily industrial) development was briefly known as theNational Republicans and later became the Whig Party6. In the election of 1828, Democrat Andrew Jacksonwas triumphant. Three times as many people voted in 1828 as had in 1824, and most cast their ballots forhim.7

The formation of the Democratic Party marked an important shift in U.S. politics. Rather than being builtlargely to coordinate elite behavior, the Democratic Party worked to organize the electorate by takingadvantage of state-level laws that had extended suffrage from male property owners to nearly all whitemen.8 This change marked the birth of what is often considered the first modern political party in anydemocracy in the world.9 It also dramatically changed the way party politics was, and still is, conducted.For one thing, this new party organization was built to include structures that focused on organizingand mobilizing voters for elections at all levels of government. The party also perfected an existing spoilssystem, in which support for the party during elections was rewarded with jobs in the governmentbureaucracy after victory.10 Many of these positions were given to party bosses and their friends. Thesemen were the leaders of political machines, organizations that secured votes for the party’s candidatesor supported the party in other ways. Perhaps more importantly, this election-focused organization alsosought to maintain power by creating a broader coalition and thereby expanding the range of issues uponwhich the party was constructed.11

Each of the two main U.S. political parties today—the Democrats(https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29demcratsorg) and the Republicans(https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29gopwebsite) —maintains an extensive websitewith links to its affiliated statewide organizations, which in turn often maintain links tothe party’s country organizations.

By comparison, here are websites for the Green Party (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29greenparty)and the Libertarian Party (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29libertarian) that are two other parties in theUnited States today.

Link to Learning



https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29demcratsorg

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29demcratsorg

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29gopwebsite

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29gopwebsite

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29greenparty

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29libertarian

The Democratic Party emphasized personal politics, which focused on building direct relationships withvoters rather than on promoting specific issues. This party dominated national politics from AndrewJackson’s presidential victory in 1828 until the mid-1850s, when regional tensions began to threaten thenation’s very existence. The growing power of industrialists, who preferred greater national authority,combined with increasing tensions between the northern and southern states over slavery, led to the riseof the Republican Party and its leader Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860, while the Democratic Partydominated in the South. Like the Democrats, the Republicans also began to utilize a mass approach toparty design and organization. Their opposition to the expansion of slavery, and their role in helping tostabilize the Union during Reconstruction, made them the dominant player in national politics for the nextseveral decades.12

The Democratic and Republican parties have remained the two dominant players in the U.S. party systemsince the Civil War (1861–1865). That does not mean, however, that the system has been stagnant. Everypolitical actor and every citizen has the ability to determine for him- or herself whether one of the twoparties meets his or her needs and provides an appealing set of policy options, or whether another optionis preferable.

At various points in the past 170 years, elites and voters have sought to create alternatives to the existingparty system. Political parties that are formed as alternatives to the Republican and Democratic parties areknown as third parties, or minor parties (Figure 9.4). In 1892, a third party known as the Populist Partyformed in reaction to what its constituents perceived as the domination of U.S. society by big business anda decline in the power of farmers and rural communities. The Populist Party called for the regulation ofrailroads, an income tax, and the popular election of U.S. senators, who at this time were chosen by statelegislatures and not by ordinary voters.13 The party’s candidate in the 1892 elections, James B. Weaver,did not perform as well as the two main party candidates, and, in the presidential election of 1896, thePopulists supported the Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. Bryan lost, and the Populists onceagain nominated their own presidential candidates in 1900, 1904, and 1908. The party disappeared fromthe national scene after 1908, but its ideas were similar to those of the Progressive Party, a new politicalparty created in 1912.


Figure 9.4 Various third parties, also known as minor parties, have appeared in the United States over the years.Some, like the Socialist Party, still exist in one form or another. Others, like the Anti-Masonic Party, which wanted toprotect the United States from the influence of the Masonic fraternal order and garnered just under 8 percent of thepopular vote in 1832, are gone.

In 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt attempted to form a third party, known as theProgressive Party, as an alternative to the more business-minded Republicans. The Progressives sought tocorrect the many problems that had arisen as the United States transformed itself from a rural, agriculturalnation into an increasingly urbanized, industrialized country dominated by big business interests. Amongthe reforms that the Progressive Party called for in its 1912 platform were women’s suffrage, an eight-hour workday, and workers’ compensation. The party also favored some of the same reforms as thePopulist Party, such as the direct election of U.S. senators and an income tax, although Populists tendedto be farmers while the Progressives were from the middle class. In general, Progressives sought to makegovernment more responsive to the will of the people and to end political corruption in government.They wished to break the power of party bosses and political machines, and called upon states to passlaws allowing voters to vote directly on proposed legislation, propose new laws, and recall from officeincompetent or corrupt elected officials. The Progressive Party largely disappeared after 1916, and mostmembers returned to the Republican Party.14 The party enjoyed a brief resurgence in 1924, when Robert“Fighting Bob” La Follette ran unsuccessfully for president under the Progressive banner.



In 1948, two new third parties appeared on the political scene. Henry A. Wallace, a vice presidentunder Franklin Roosevelt, formed a new Progressive Party, which had little in common with the earlierProgressive Party. Wallace favored racial desegregation and believed that the United States should havecloser ties to the Soviet Union. Wallace’s campaign was a failure, largely because most people believedhis policies, including national healthcare, were too much like those of communism, and this party alsovanished. The other third party, the States’ Rights Democrats, also known as the Dixiecrats, were white,southern Democrats who split from the Democratic Party when Harry Truman, who favored civil rightsfor African Americans, became the party’s nominee for president. The Dixiecrats opposed all attempts bythe federal government to end segregation, extend voting rights, prohibit discrimination in employment,or otherwise promote social equality among races.15 They remained a significant party that threatenedDemocratic unity throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Other examples of third parties in the United Statesinclude the American Independent Party, the Libertarian Party, United We Stand America, the ReformParty, and the Green Party.

None of these alternatives to the two major political parties had much success at the national level, andmost are no longer viable parties. All faced the same fate. Formed by charismatic leaders, each championeda relatively narrow set of causes and failed to gain broad support among the electorate. Once their leadershad been defeated or discredited, the party structures that were built to contest elections collapsed. Andwithin a few years, most of their supporters were eventually pulled back into one of the existing parties.To be sure, some of these parties had an electoral impact. For example, the Progressive Party pulledenough votes away from the Republicans to hand the 1912 election to the Democrats. Thus, the third-party rival’s principal accomplishment was helping its least-preferred major party win, usually at theshort-term expense of the very issue it championed. In the long run, however, many third parties havebrought important issues to the attention of the major parties, which then incorporated these issues intotheir platforms. Understanding why this is the case is an important next step in learning about the issuesand strategies of the modern Republican and Democratic parties. In the next section, we look at why theUnited States has historically been dominated by only two political parties.

9.2 The Two-Party System

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:• Describe the effects of winner-take-all elections• Compare plurality and proportional representation• Describe the institutional, legal, and social forces that limit the number of parties• Discuss the concepts of party alignment and realignment

One of the cornerstones of a vibrant democracy is citizens’ ability to influence government through voting.In order for that influence to be meaningful, citizens must send clear signals to their leaders about whatthey wish the government to do. It only makes sense, then, that a democracy will benefit if voters haveseveral clearly differentiated options available to them at the polls on Election Day. Having these optionsmeans voters can select a candidate who more closely represents their own preferences on the importantissues of the day. It also gives individuals who are considering voting a reason to participate. After all,you are more likely to vote if you care about who wins and who loses. The existence of two major parties,especially in our present era of strong parties, leads to sharp distinctions between the candidates andbetween the party organizations.

Why do we have two parties? The two-party system came into being because the structure of U.S.elections, with one seat tied to a geographic district, tends to lead to dominance by two major politicalparties. Even when there are other options on the ballot, most voters understand that minor partieshave no real chance of winning even a single office. Hence, they vote for candidates of the two major


parties in order to support a potential winner. Of the 535 members of the House and Senate, only ahandful identify as something other than Republican or Democrat. Third parties have fared no better inpresidential elections. No third-party candidate has ever won the presidency. Some historians or politicalscientists might consider Abraham Lincoln to have been such a candidate, but in 1860, the Republicanswere a major party that had subsumed members of earlier parties, such as the Whig Party, and they werethe only major party other than the Democratic Party.

ELECTION RULES AND THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

A number of reasons have been suggested to explain why the structure of U.S. elections has resulted in atwo-party system. Most of the blame has been placed on the process used to select its representatives. First,most elections at the state and national levels are winner-take-all: The candidate who receives the greatestoverall number of votes wins. Winner-take-all elections with one representative elected for one geographicdistrict allow voters to develop a personal relationship with “their” representative to the government.They know exactly whom to blame, or thank, for the actions of that government. But these elections alsotend to limit the number of people who run for office. Otherwise-qualified candidates might not standfor election if they feel the incumbent or another candidate has an early advantage in the race. And sincevoters do not like to waste votes, third parties must convince voters they have a real chance of winningraces before voters will take them seriously. This is a tall order given the vast resources and mobilizationtools available to the existing parties, especially if an incumbent is one of the competitors. In turn, thelikelihood that third-party challengers will lose an election bid makes it more difficult to raise funds tosupport later attempts.16

Winner-take-all systems of electing candidates to office, which exist in several countries other than theUnited States, require that the winner receive either the majority of votes or a plurality of the votes. U.S.elections are based on plurality voting. Plurality voting, commonly referred to as first-past-the-post, isbased on the principle that the individual candidate with the most votes wins, whether or not he or shegains a majority (51 percent or greater) of the total votes cast. For instance, Abraham Lincoln won thepresidency in 1860 even though he clearly lacked majority support given the number of candidates inthe race. In 1860, four candidates competed for the presidency: Lincoln, a Republican; two Democrats,one from the northern wing of the party and one from the southern wing; and a member of the newlyformed Constitutional Union Party, a southern party that wished to prevent the nation from dividingover the issue of slavery. Votes were split among all four parties, and Lincoln became president with only40 percent of the vote, not a majority of votes cast but more than any of the other three candidates hadreceived, and enough to give him a majority in the Electoral College, the body that ultimately decidespresidential elections. Plurality voting has been justified as the simplest and most cost-effective methodfor identifying a victor in a democracy. A single election can be held on a single day, and the victor of thecompetition is easily selected. On the other hand, systems in which people vote for a single candidate in anindividual district often cost more money because drawing district lines and registering voters accordingto district is often expensive and cumbersome.17

In a system in which individual candidates compete for individual seats representing unique geographicdistricts, a candidate must receive a fairly large number of votes in order to win. A political partythat appeals to only a small percentage of voters will always lose to a party that is more popular.18

Because second-place (or lower) finishers will receive no reward for their efforts, those parties that do notattract enough supporters to finish first at least some of the time will eventually disappear because theirsupporters realize they have no hope of achieving success at the polls.19 The failure of third parties to winand the possibility that they will draw votes away from the party the voter had favored before—resultingin a win for the party the voter liked least—makes people hesitant to vote for the third party’s candidatesa second time. This has been the fate of all U.S. third parties—the Populist Party, the Progressives, theDixiecrats, the Reform Party, and others.

In a proportional electoral system, however, parties advertise who is on their candidate list and voterspick a party. Then, legislative seats are doled out to the parties based on the proportion of support eachparty receives. While the Green Party in the United States might not win a single congressional seat in



some years thanks to plurality voting, in a proportional system, it stands a chance to get a few seats in thelegislature regardless. For example, assume the Green Party gets 7 percent of the vote. In the United States,7 percent will never be enough to win a single seat, shutting the Green candidates out of Congress entirely,whereas in a proportional system, the Green Party will get 7 percent of the total number of legislative seatsavailable. Hence, it could get a foothold for its issues and perhaps increase its support over time. But withplurality voting, it doesn’t stand a chance.

Third parties, often born of frustration with the current system, attract supporters from one or both ofthe existing parties during an election but fail to attract enough votes to win. After the election is over,supporters experience remorse when their least-favorite candidate wins instead. For example, in the 2000election, Ralph Nader ran for president as the candidate of the Green Party. Nader, a longtime consumeractivist concerned with environmental issues and social justice, attracted many votes from people whousually voted for Democratic candidates. This has caused some to claim that Democratic nominee Al Gorelost the 2000 election to Republican George W. Bush, because Nader won Democratic votes in Florida thatmight otherwise have gone to Gore (Figure 9.5).20

Figure 9.5 Ralph Nader, a longtime consumer advocate and crusader for social justice and the environment,campaigned as an independent in 2008 (a). However, in 2000, he ran for the presidency as the Green Partycandidate. He received votes from many Democrats, and some analysts claim Nader’s campaign cost Al Gore thepresidency—an ironic twist for a politician who would come to be known primarily for his environmental activism, evenwinning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (b) for his efforts to inform the public about climate change. (credit a:modification of work by “Mely-o”/Flikr”; credit b: modification of work by “kangotraveler”/Flickr)

Abandoning plurality voting, even if the winner-take-all election were kept, would almost certainlyincrease the number of parties from which voters could choose. The easiest switch would be to amajoritarian voting scheme, in which a candidate wins only if he or she enjoys the support of a majorityof voters. If no candidate wins a majority in the first round of voting, a run-off election is held among thetop contenders. Some states conduct their primary elections within the two major political parties in thisway.

A second way to increase the number of parties in the U.S. system is to abandon the winner-take-allapproach. Rather than allowing voters to pick their representatives directly, many democracies havechosen to have voters pick their preferred party and allow the party to select the individuals who servein government. The argument for this method is that it is ultimately the party and not the individual whowill influence policy. Under this model of proportional representation, legislative seats are allocated tocompeting parties based on the total share of votes they receive in the election. As a result, any givenelection can have multiple winners, and voters who might prefer a smaller party over a major one have achance to be represented in government (Figure 9.6).


Figure 9.6 While a U.S. ballot (a) for first-past-the-post elections features candidates’ names, the ballots ofproportional representation countries list the parties. On this Russian ballot (b), the voter is offered a choice of SocialDemocratic, Nationalist, Socialist, and Communist parties, among others.

One possible way to implement proportional representation in the United States is to allocate legislativeseats based on the national level of support for each party’s presidential candidate, rather than on theresults of individual races. If this method had been used in the 1996 elections, 8 percent of the seats inCongress would have gone to Ross Perot’s Reform Party because he won 8 percent of the votes cast. Eventhough Perot himself lost, his supporters would have been rewarded for their efforts with representativeswho had a real voice in government. And Perot’s party’s chances of survival would have greatly increased.

Electoral rules are probably not the only reason the United States has a two-party system. We needonly look at the number of parties in the British or Canadian systems, both of which are winner-take-allplurality systems like that in the United States, to see that it is possible to have more than two parties whilestill directly electing representatives. The two-party system is also rooted in U.S. history. The first parties,the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans, disagreed about how much power should be given to thefederal government, and differences over other important issues further strengthened this divide. Overtime, these parties evolved into others by inheriting, for the most part, the general ideological positionsand constituents of their predecessors, but no more than two major parties ever formed. Instead of partiesarising based on region or ethnicity, various regions and ethnic groups sought a place in one of the twomajor parties.

Scholars of voting behavior have also suggested at least three other characteristics of the U.S. system thatare likely to influence party outcomes: the Electoral College, demobilized ethnicity, and campaign andelection laws. First, the United States has a presidential system in which the winner is selected not directlyby the popular vote but indirectly by a group of electors known collectively as the Electoral College. Thewinner-take-all system also applies in the Electoral College. In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska),the total of the state’s electoral votes go to the candidate who wins the plurality of the popular vote in that



state. Even if a new, third party is able to win the support of a lot of voters, it must be able to do so inseveral states in order to win enough electoral votes to have a chance of winning the presidency.21

Besides the existence of the Electoral College, political scientist Gary W. Cox has also suggested that therelative prosperity of the United States and the relative unity of its citizens have prevented the formationof “large dissenting groups” that might give support to third parties.22 This is similar to the argument thatthe United States does not have viable third parties, because none of its regions is dominated by mobilizedethnic minorities that have created political parties in order to defend and to address concerns solely ofinterest to that ethnic group. Such parties are common in other countries.

Finally, party success is strongly influenced by local election laws. Someone has to write the rules thatgovern elections, and those rules help to determine outcomes. In the United States, such rules have beenwritten to make it easy for existing parties to secure a spot for their candidates in future elections. Butsome states create significant burdens for candidates who wish to run as independents or who choose torepresent new parties. For example, one common practice is to require a candidate who does not have thesupport of a major party to ask registered voters to sign a petition. Sometimes, thousands of signatures arerequired before a candidate’s name can be placed on the ballot (Figure 9.7), but a small third party thatdoes have large numbers of supporters in some states may not be able to secure enough signatures for thisto happen.23

Figure 9.7 Costa Constantinides (right), while campaigning in 2013 to represent the 22nd District on the New YorkCity Council, said, “Few things are more important to a campaign than the petition process to get on the ballot. Wewere so pumped up to get started that we went out at 12:01 a.m. on June 4 to start collecting signatures right away!”Constantinides won the election later that year. (credit: modification of work by Costa Constantinides)

Visit Fair Vote (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29fairvoteweb) for a discussion ofballot access laws across the country.

Given the obstacles to the formation of third parties, it is unlikely that serious challenges to the U.S. two-party system will emerge. But this does not mean that we should view it as entirely stable either. The U.S.

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https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29fairvoteweb

party system is technically a loose organization of fifty different state parties and has undergone severalconsiderable changes since its initial consolidation after the Civil War. Third-party movements may haveplayed a role in some of these changes, but all resulted in a shifting of party loyalties among the U.S.electorate.

CRITICAL ELECTIONS AND REALIGNMENT

Political parties exist for the purpose of winning elections in order to influence public policy. This requiresthem to build coalitions across a wide range of voters who share similar preferences. Since most U.S. votersidentify as moderates,24 the historical tendency has been for the two parties to compete for “the middle”while also trying to mobilize their more loyal bases. If voters’ preferences remained stable for long periodsof time, and if both parties did a good job of competing for their votes, we could expect Republicans andDemocrats to be reasonably competitive in any given election. Election outcomes would probably be basedon the way voters compared the parties on the most important events of the day rather than on electoralstrategy.

There are many reasons we would be wrong in these expectations, however. First, the electorate isn’tentirely stable. Each generation of voters has been a bit different from the last. Over time, the United Stateshas become more socially liberal, especially on topics related to race and gender, and millennials—thoseaged 18–34—are more liberal than members of older generations.25 The electorate’s economic preferenceshave changed, and different social groups are likely to become more engaged in politics now than they didin the past. Surveys conducted in 2016, for example, revealed that candidates’ religion is less importantto voters than it once was. Also, as young Latinos reach voting age, they seem more inclined to votethan do their parents, which may raise the traditionally low voting rates among this ethnic group.26

Internal population shifts and displacements have also occurred, as various regions have taken their turnexperiencing economic growth or stagnation, and as new waves of immigrants have come to U.S. shores.

Additionally, the major parties have not always been unified in their approach to contesting elections.While we think of both Congress and the presidency as national offices, the reality is that congressionalelections are sometimes more like local elections. Voters may reflect on their preferences for national policywhen deciding whom to send to the Senate or the House of Representatives, but they are very likely toview national policy in the context of its effects on their area, their family, or themselves, not based on whatis happening to the country as a whole. For example, while many voters want to reduce the federal budget,those over sixty-five are particularly concerned that no cuts to the Medicare program be made.27 One-third of those polled reported that “senior’s issues” were most important to them when voting for nationalofficeholders.28 If they hope to keep their jobs, elected officials must thus be sensitive to preferences intheir home constituencies as well as the preferences of their national party.

Finally, it sometimes happens that over a series of elections, parties may be unable or unwilling to adapttheir positions to broader socio-demographic or economic forces. Parties need to be aware when societychanges. If leaders refuse to recognize that public opinion has changed, the party is unlikely to win inthe next election. For example, people who describe themselves as evangelical Christians are an importantRepublican constituency; they are also strongly opposed to abortion.29 Thus, even though the majority ofU.S. adults believe abortion should be legal in at least some instances, such as when a pregnancy is theresult of rape or incest, or threatens the life of the mother, the position of many Republican presidentialcandidates in 2016 was to oppose abortion in all cases.30 As a result, many women view the RepublicanParty as unsympathetic to their interests and are more likely to support Democratic candidates.31 Similarly(or simultaneously), groups that have felt that the party has served their causes in the past may decideto look elsewhere if they feel their needs are no longer being met. Either way, the party system will beupended as a result of a party realignment, or a shifting of party allegiances within the electorate (Table9.1).32



Periods of Party Dominance and Realignment

Era Party Systems and Realignments

1796–1824 First Party System: Federalists (urban elites, southern planters, New England) opposeDemocratic-Republicans (rural, small farmers and artisans, the South and the West).

1828–1856 Second Party System: Democrats (the South, cities, farmers and artisans, immigrants) opposeWhigs (former Federalists, the North, middle class, native-born Americans).

1860–1892 Third Party System: Republicans (former Whigs plus African Americans) control the presidency.Only one Democrat, Grover Cleveland, is elected president (1884, 1892).

1896–1932Fourth Party System: Republicans control the presidency. Only one Democrat, WoodrowWilson, is elected president (1912, 1916). Challenges to major parties are raised by Populists andProgressives.

1932–1964Fifth Party System. Democrats control the presidency. Only one Republican, DwightEisenhower, is elected president (1952, 1956). Major party realignment as African Americansbecome part of the Democratic coalition.

1964–presentSixth Party System. No one party controls the presidency. Ongoing realignment as southernwhites and many northern members of the working class begin to vote for Republicans. Latinosand Asians immigrate, most of whom vote for Democrats.

Table 9.1 There have been six distinctive periods in U.S. history when new political parties have emerged,control of the presidency has shifted from one party to another, or significant changes in a party’s makeuphave occurred.

One of the best-known party realignments occurred when Democrats moved to include African Americansand other minorities into their national coalition during the Great Depression. After the Civil War,Republicans, the party of Lincoln, were viewed as the party that had freed the slaves. Their effortsto provide blacks with greater legal rights earned them the support of African Americans in both theSouth, where they were newly enfranchised, and the Northeast. When the Democrats, the party of theConfederacy, lost control of the South after the Civil War, Republicans ruled the region. However, theDemocrats regained control of the South after the removal of the Union army in 1877. Democrats hadlargely supported slavery before the Civil War, and they opposed postwar efforts to integrate AfricanAmericans into society after they were liberated. In addition, Democrats in the North and Midwest drewtheir greatest support from labor union members and immigrants who viewed African Americans ascompetitors for jobs and government resources, and who thus tended to oppose the extension of rights toAfrican Americans as much as their southern counterparts did.33

While the Democrats’ opposition to civil rights may have provided regional advantages in southern orurban elections, it was largely disastrous for national politics. From 1868 to 1931, Democratic candidateswon just four of sixteen presidential elections. Two of these victories can be explained as a result of thespoiler effect of the Progressive Party in 1912 and then Woodrow Wilson’s reelection during World WarI in 1916. This rather-dismal success rate suggested that a change in the governing coalition would beneeded if the party were to have a chance at once again becoming a player on the national level.

That change began with the 1932 presidential campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR determinedthat his best path toward victory was to create a new coalition based not on region or ethnicity, but onthe suffering of those hurt the most during the Great Depression. This alignment sought to bring AfricanAmerican voters in as a means of shoring up support in major urban areas and the Midwest, where manysouthern blacks had migrated in the decades after the Civil War in search of jobs and better education fortheir children, as well as to avoid many of the legal restrictions placed on them in the South. Rooseveltaccomplished this realignment by promising assistance to those hurt most by the Depression, includingAfrican Americans.


The strategy worked. Roosevelt won the election with almost 58 percent of the popular vote and 472Electoral College votes, compared to incumbent Herbert Hoover’s 59. The 1932 election is considered anexample of a critical election, one that represents a sudden, clear, and long-term shift in voter allegiances.After this election, the political parties were largely identified as being divided by differences in theirmembers’ socio-economic status. Those who favor stability of the current political and economic systemtend to vote Republican, whereas those who would most benefit from changing the system usually favorDemocratic candidates. Based on this alignment, the Democratic Party won the next five consecutivepresidential elections and was able to build a political machine that dominated Congress into the 1990s,including holding an uninterrupted majority in the House of Representatives from 1954 until 1994.

The realignment of the parties did have consequences for Democrats. African Americans became anincreasingly important part of the Democratic coalition in the 1940s through the 1960s, as the party tooksteps to support civil rights.34 Most changes were limited to the state level at first, but as civil rights reformmoved to the national stage, rifts between northern and southern Democrats began to emerge.35 SouthernDemocrats became increasingly convinced that national efforts to provide social welfare and encourageracial integration were violating state sovereignty and social norms. By the 1970s, many had begun to shifttheir allegiance to the Republican Party, whose pro-business wing shared their opposition to the growingencroachment of the national government into what they viewed as state and local matters.36

Almost fifty years after it had begun, the realignment of the two political parties resulted in the flippingof post-Civil War allegiances, with urban areas and the Northeast now solidly Democratic, and the Southand rural areas overwhelmingly voting Republican. The result today is a political system that providesRepublicans with considerable advantages in rural areas and most parts of the Deep South.37 Democratsdominate urban politics and those parts of the South, known as the Black Belt, where the majority ofresidents are African American.

9.3 The Shape of Modern Political Parties

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:• Differentiate between the party in the electorate and the party organization• Discuss the importance of voting in a political party organization• Describe party organization at the county, state, and national levels• Compare the perspectives of the party in government and the party in the electorate

We have discussed the two major political parties in the United States, how they formed, and some of thesmaller parties that have challenged their dominance over time. However, what exactly do political partiesdo? If the purpose of political parties is to work together to create and implement policies by winningelections, how do they accomplish this task, and who actually participates in the process?

The answer was fairly straightforward in the early days of the republic when parties were little morethan electoral coalitions of like-minded, elite politicians. But improvements in strategy and changes in theelectorate forced the parties to become far more complex organizations that operate on several levels in theU.S. political arena. Modern political parties consist of three components identified by political scientistV. O. Key: the party in the electorate (the voters); the party organization (which helps to coordinateeverything the party does in its quest for office); and the party in office (the office holders). To understandhow these various elements work together, we begin by thinking about a key first step in influencingpolicy in any democracy: winning elections.



THE PARTY-IN-THE-ELECTORATE

A key fact about the U.S. political party system is that it’s all about the votes. If voters do not show up tovote for a party’s candidates on Election Day, the party has no chance of gaining office and implementingits preferred policies. As we have seen, for much of their history, the two parties have been adapting tochanges in the size, composition, and preferences of the U.S. electorate. It only makes sense, then, thatparties have found it in their interest to build a permanent and stable presence among the voters. Byfostering a sense of loyalty, a party can insulate itself from changes in the system and improve its oddsof winning elections. The party-in-the-electorate are those members of the voting public who considerthemselves to be part of a political party and/or who consistently prefer the candidates of one party overthe other.

What it means to be part of a party depends on where a voter lives and how much he or she chooses toparticipate in politics. At its most basic level, being a member of the party-in-the-electorate simply meansa voter is more likely to voice support for a party. These voters are often called party identifiers, sincethey usually represent themselves in public as being members of a party, and they may attend some partyevents or functions. Party identifiers are also more likely to provide financial support for the candidates oftheir party during election season. This does not mean self-identified Democrats will support all the party’spositions or candidates, but it does mean that, on the whole, they feel their wants or needs are more likelyto be met if the Democratic Party is successful.

Party identifiers make up the majority of the voting public. Gallup, the polling agency, has been collectingdata on voter preferences for the past several decades. Its research suggests that historically, over halfof American adults have called themselves “Republican” or “Democrat” when asked how they identifythemselves politically (Figure 9.8). Even among self-proclaimed independents, the overwhelmingmajority claim to lean in the direction of one party or the other, suggesting they behave as if they identifiedwith a party during elections even if they preferred not to publicly pick a side. Partisan support is so strongthat, in a poll conducted from August 5 to August 9, 2015, about 88 percent of respondents said they eitheridentified with or, if they were independents, at least leaned toward one of the major political parties.38

Thus, in a poll conducted in January 2016, even though about 42 percent of respondents said they wereindependent, this does not mean that they are not, in fact, more likely to favor one party over the other.39


Figure 9.8 As the chart reveals, generation affects party identification. Millennials (ages 18–34) are more likely toidentify as or lean towards the Democratic Party and less likely to favor Republicans than are their baby boomerparents and grandparents (born between 1946 and 1964).

Strictly speaking, party identification is not quite the same thing as party membership. People maycall themselves Republicans or Democrats without being registered as a member of the party, and theRepublican and Democratic parties do not require individuals to join their formal organization in thesame way that parties in some other countries do. Many states require voters to declare a party affiliationbefore participating in primaries, but primary participation is irregular and infrequent, and a voter maychange his or her identity long before changing party registration. For most voters, party identification isinformal at best and often matters only in the weeks before an election. It does matter, however, becauseparty identification guides some voters, who may know little about a particular issue or candidate, incasting their ballots. If, for example, someone thinks of him- or herself as a Republican and always votesRepublican, he or she will not be confused when faced with a candidate, perhaps in a local or countyelection, whose name is unfamiliar. If the candidate is a Republican, the voter will likely cast a ballot forhim or her.

Party ties can manifest in other ways as well. The actual act of registering to vote and selecting a partyreinforces party loyalty. Moreover, while pundits and scholars often deride voters who blindly vote theirparty, the selection of a party in the first place can be based on issue positions and ideology. In that regard,voting your party on Election Day is not a blind act—it is a shortcut based on issue positions.



THE PARTY ORGANIZATION

A significant subset of American voters views their party identification as something far beyond simplya shortcut to voting. These individuals get more energized by the political process and have chosen tobecome more active in the life of political parties. They are part of what is known as the party organization.The party organization is the formal structure of the political party, and its active members are responsiblefor coordinating party behavior and supporting party candidates. It is a vital component of any successfulparty because it bears most of the responsibility for building and maintaining the party “brand.” It alsoplays a key role in helping select, and elect, candidates for public office.

Local Organizations

Since winning elections is the first goal of the political party, it makes sense that the formal partyorganization mirrors the local-state-federal structure of the U.S. political system. While the lowest level ofparty organization is technically the precinct, many of the operational responsibilities for local electionsfall upon the county-level organization. The county-level organization is in many ways the workhorseof the party system, especially around election time. This level of organization frequently takes on manyof the most basic responsibilities of a democratic system, including identifying and mobilizing potentialvoters and donors, identifying and training potential candidates for public office, and recruiting newmembers for the party. County organizations are also often responsible for finding rank and file membersto serve as volunteers on Election Day, either as officials responsible for operating the polls or as monitorsresponsible for ensuring that elections are conducted honestly and fairly. They may also hold regularmeetings to provide members the opportunity to meet potential candidates and coordinate strategy(Figure 9.9). Of course, all this is voluntary and relies on dedicated party members being willing to pitchin to run the party.

Figure 9.9 Political parties are bottom-up structures, with lower levels often responsible for selecting delegates tohigher-level offices or conventions.


State Organizations

Most of the county organizations’ formal efforts are devoted to supporting party candidates running forcounty and city offices. But a fair amount of political power is held by individuals in statewide officeor in state-level legislative or judicial bodies. While the county-level offices may be active in these localcompetitions, most of the coordination for them will take place in the state-level organizations. Like theirmore local counterparts, state-level organizations are responsible for key party functions, such as statewidecandidate recruitment and campaign mobilization. Most of their efforts focus on electing high-rankingofficials such as the governor or occupants of other statewide offices (e.g., the state’s treasurer or attorneygeneral) as well as candidates to represent the state and its residents in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Houseof Representatives. The greater value of state- and national-level offices requires state organizations to takeon several key responsibilities in the life of the party.

Visit the following Republican (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29iowagoporg) andDemocratic (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29ridemocrats) sites to see what partyorganizations look like on the local level. Although these sites are for different partiesin different parts of the country, they both inform visitors of local party events, helppeople volunteer to work for the party, and provide a convenient means of

contributing to the party.

First, state-level organizations usually accept greater fundraising responsibilities than do their localcounterparts. Statewide races and races for national office have become increasingly expensive in recentyears. The average cost of a successful House campaign was $1.2 million in 2014; for Senate races, it was$8.6 million.40 While individual candidates are responsible for funding and running their own races, it istypically up to the state-level organization to coordinate giving across multiple races and to develop thestaffing expertise that these candidates will draw upon at election time.

State organizations are also responsible for creating a sense of unity among members of the state party.Building unity can be very important as the party transitions from sometimes-contentious nominationbattles to the all-important general election. The state organization uses several key tools to get itsmembers working together towards a common goal. First, it helps the party’s candidates prepare for stateprimary elections or caucuses that allow voters to choose a nominee to run for public office at either thestate or national level. Caucuses are a form of town hall meeting at which voters in a precinct get togetherto voice their preferences, rather than voting individually throughout the day (Figure 9.10).

Link to Learning



https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29iowagoporg

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29ridemocrats

Figure 9.10 Caucus-goers gather at a Democratic precinct caucus on January 3, 2008, in Iowa City, Iowa.Caucuses are held every two years in more than 1650 Iowa precincts.

Second, the state organization is also responsible for drafting a state platform that serves as a policy guidefor partisans who are eventually selected to public office. These platforms are usually the result of anegotiation between the various coalitions within the party and are designed to ensure that everyone inthe party will receive some benefits if their candidates win the election. Finally, state organizations hold astatewide convention at which delegates from the various county organizations come together to discussthe needs of their areas. The state conventions are also responsible for selecting delegates to the nationalconvention.

National Party Organization

The local and state-level party organizations are the workhorses of the political process. They take on mostof the responsibility for party activities and are easily the most active participants in the party formationand electoral processes. They are also largely invisible to most voters. The average citizen knows very littleof the local party’s behavior unless there is a phone call or a knock on the door in the days or weeks beforean election. The same is largely true of the activities of the state-level party. Typically, the only people whonotice are those who are already actively engaged in politics or are being targeted for donations.

But most people are aware of the presence and activity of the national party organizations for severalreasons. First, many Americans, especially young people, are more interested in the topics discussed atthe national level than at the state or local level. According to John Green of the Ray C. Bliss Instituteof Applied Politics, “Local elections tend to be about things like sewers, and roads and policeprotection—which are not as dramatic an issue as same-sex marriage or global warming or internationalaffairs.”41 Presidential elections and the behavior of the U.S. Congress are also far more likely to makethe news broadcasts than the activities of county commissioners, and the national-level party organizationis mostly responsible for coordinating the activities of participants at this level. The national party is afundraising army for presidential candidates and also serves a key role in trying to coordinate and directthe efforts of the House and Senate. For this reason, its leadership is far more likely to become visible tomedia consumers, whether they intend to vote or not.

A second reason for the prominence of the national organization is that it usually coordinates the grandestspectacles in the life of a political party. Most voters are never aware of the numerous county-levelmeetings or coordinating activities. Primary elections, one of the most important events to take place atthe state level, have a much lower turnout than the nationwide general election. In 2012, for example, onlyone-third of the eligible voters in New Hampshire voted in the state’s primary, one of the earliest andthus most important in the nation; however, 70 percent of eligible voters in the state voted in the generalelection in November 2012.42 People may see or read an occasional story about the meetings of the state


committees or convention but pay little attention. But the national conventions, organized and sponsoredby the national-level party, can dominate the national discussion for several weeks in late summer, a timewhen the major media outlets are often searching for news. These conventions are the definition of a mediacircus at which high-ranking politicians, party elites, and sometimes celebrities, such as actor/directorClint Eastwood (Figure 9.11), along with individuals many consider to be the future leaders of the partyare brought before the public so the party can make its best case for being the one to direct the future of thecountry.43 National party conventions culminate in the formal nomination of the party nominees for theoffices of president and vice president, and they mark the official beginning of the presidential competitionbetween the two parties.

Figure 9.11 In August 2012, Clint Eastwood—actor, director, and former mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea,California—spoke at the Republican National Convention accompanied by an empty chair representing theDemocratic incumbent president Barack Obama.

In the past, national conventions were often the sites of high drama and political intrigue. As late as 1968,the identities of the presidential and/or vice-presidential nominees were still unknown to the generalpublic when the convention opened. It was also common for groups protesting key events and issues ofthe day to try to raise their profile by using the conventions to gain the media spotlight. National mediaoutlets would provide “gavel to gavel” coverage of the conventions, and the relatively limited numberof national broadcast channels meant most viewers were essentially forced to choose between followingthe conventions or checking out of the media altogether. Much has changed since the 1960s, however,and between 1960 and 2004, viewership of both the Democratic National Convention and the RepublicanNational Convention had declined by half.44

National conventions are not the spectacles they once were, and this fact is almost certainly havingan impact on the profile of the national party organization. Both parties have come to recognize thevalue of the convention as a medium through which they can communicate to the average viewer.To ensure that they are viewed in the best possible light, the parties have worked hard to turn thepublic face of the convention into a highly sanitized, highly orchestrated media event. Speakers are oftenrequired to have their speeches prescreened to ensure that they do not deviate from the party line or runthe risk of embarrassing the eventual nominee—whose name has often been known by all for severalmonths. And while protests still happen, party organizations have becoming increasingly adept at keepingprotesters away from the convention sites, arguing that safety and security are more important than FirstAmendment rights to speech and peaceable assembly. For example, protestors were kept behind concretebarriers and fences at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.45

With the advent of cable TV news and the growth of internet blogging, the major news outlets have foundit unnecessary to provide the same level of coverage they once did. Between 1976 and 1996, ABC and



CBS cut their coverage of the nominating conventions from more than fifty hours to only five. NBC cutits coverage to fewer than five hours.46 One reason may be that the outcome of nominating conventionsare also typically known in advance, meaning there is no drama. Today, the nominee’s acceptance speechis expected to be no longer than an hour, so it will not take up more than one block of prime-time TVprogramming.

This is not to say the national conventions are no longer important, or that the national party organizationsare becoming less relevant. The conventions, and the organizations that run them, still contribute heavilyto a wide range of key decisions in the life of both parties. The national party platform is formally adoptedat the convention, as are the key elements of the strategy for contesting the national campaign. And eventhough the media is paying less attention, key insiders and major donors often use the convention as away of gauging the strength of the party and its ability to effectively organize and coordinate its members.They are also paying close attention to the rising stars who are given time at the convention’s podium, tosee which are able to connect with the party faithful. Most observers credit Barack Obama’s speech at the2004 Democratic National Convention with bringing him to national prominence.47

Conventions and Trial Balloons

While both political parties use conventions to help win the current elections, they also use them as a way ofelevating local politicians to the national spotlight. This has been particularly true for the Democratic Party. In1988, the Democrats tapped Arkansas governor Bill Clinton to introduce their nominee Michael Dukakis at theconvention. Clinton’s speech was lampooned for its length and lack of focus, but it served to get his name infront of Democratic voters. Four years later, Clinton was able to leverage this national exposure to help hisown presidential campaign. The pattern was repeated when then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama gave thekeynote address at the 2004 convention (Figure 9.12). Although he was only a candidate for a U.S. Senateseat at the time, his address caught the attention of the Democratic establishment and ultimately led to hisemergence as a viable presidential candidate just four years later.

Figure 9.12 Barack Obama gives his “Two Americas” speech at the Democratic National Convention inBoston in July 2004. At the time, he was an Illinois state senator running for the U.S. Senate.

Should the media devote more attention to national conventions? Would this help voters choose the candidatethey want to vote for?

Insider Perspective


Bill Clinton’s lengthy nomination speech (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29billclinnomsp) in 1988 was much derided, but served the purpose of providingnational exposure to a state governor. Barack Obama’s inspirational speech(https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29barobanomsp) at the 2004 national conventionresulted in immediate speculation as to his wider political aspirations.

THE PARTY-IN-GOVERNMENT

One of the first challenges facing the party-in-government, or the party identifiers who have been electedor appointed to hold public office, is to achieve their policy goals. The means to do this is chosenin meetings of the two major parties; Republican meetings are called party conferences and Democratmeetings are called party caucuses. Members of each party meet in these closed sessions and discuss whatitems to place on the legislative agenda and make decisions about which party members should serve onthe committees that draft proposed laws. Party members also elect the leaders of their respective partiesin the House and the Senate, and their party whips. Leaders serve as party managers and are the highest-ranking members of the party in each chamber of Congress. The party whip ensures that members arepresent when a piece of legislation is to be voted on and directs them how to vote. The whip is the second-highest ranking member of the party in each chamber. Thus, both the Republicans and the Democratshave a leader and a whip in the House, and a leader and a whip in the Senate. The leader and whip ofthe party that holds the majority of seats in each house are known as the majority leader and the majoritywhip. The leader and whip of the party with fewer seats are called the minority leader and the minoritywhip. The party that controls the majority of seats in the House of Representatives also elects someone toserve as Speaker of the House. People elected to Congress as independents (that is, not members of eitherthe Republican or Democratic parties) must choose a party to conference or caucus with. For example,Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for Senate as an independent candidate, caucuses with theDemocrats in the Senate.

The political parties in government must represent their parties and the entirecountry at the same time. One way they do this is by creating separate governingand party structures in the legislature, even though these are run by the samepeople. Check out some of the more important leadership organizations and theirpartisan counterparts in the House of Representatives

(https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29hofreporg) and the Senate (https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29senateorga) leadership.

Link to Learning

Link to Learning



https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29billclinnomsp

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29billclinnomsp

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29barobanomsp

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29barobanomsp

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29hofreporg

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29hofreporg

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29senateorga

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29senateorga

Party Organization from the Inside

Interested in a cool summer job? Want to actually make a difference in your community? Consider aninternship at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or Republican National Committee (RNC). Bothorganizations offer internship programs for college students who want hands-on experience working incommunity outreach and grassroots organizing. While many internship opportunities are based at the nationalheadquarters in Washington, DC, openings may exist within state party organizations.

Internship positions can be very competitive; most applicants are juniors or seniors with high grade-pointaverages and strong recommendations from their faculty. Successful applicants get an inside view ofgovernment, build a great professional network, and have the opportunity to make a real difference in the livesof their friends and families.

Visit the DNC or RNC website and find out what it takes to be an intern. While there, also check out the stateparty organization. Is there a local leader you feel you could work for? Are any upcoming events scheduled inyour state?

One problem facing the party-in-government relates to the design of the country’s political system. TheU.S. government is based on a complex principle of separation of powers, with power divided amongthe executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. The system is further complicated by federalism, whichrelegates some powers to the states, which also have separation of powers. This complexity creates anumber of problems for maintaining party unity. The biggest is that each level and unit of government hasdifferent constituencies that the office holder must satisfy. The person elected to the White House is morebeholden to the national party organization than are members of the House or Senate, because membersof Congress must be reelected by voters in very different states, each with its own state-level and county-level parties.

Some of this complexity is eased for the party that holds the executive branch of government. Executiveoffices are typically more visible to the voters than the legislature, in no small part because a single personholds the office. Voters are more likely to show up at the polls and vote if they feel strongly about thecandidate running for president or governor, but they are also more likely to hold that person accountablefor the government’s failures.48

Members of the legislature from the executive’s party are under a great deal of pressure to make theexecutive look good, because a popular president or governor may be able to help other party memberswin office. Even so, partisans in the legislature cannot be expected to simply obey the executive’s orders.First, legislators may serve a constituency that disagrees with the executive on key matters of policy. Ifthe issue is important enough to voters, as in the case of gun control or abortion rights, an office holdermay feel his or her job will be in jeopardy if he or she too closely follows the party line, even if thatmeans disagreeing with the executive. A good example occurred when the Civil Rights Act of 1964,which desegregated public accommodations and prohibited discrimination in employment on the basisof race, was introduced in Congress. The bill was supported by Presidents John F. Kennedy and LyndonJohnson, both of whom were Democrats. Nevertheless, many Republicans, such as William McCulloch, aconservative representative from Ohio, voted in its favor while many southern Democrats opposed it.49

A second challenge is that each house of the legislature has its own leadership and committee structure,and those leaders may not be in total harmony with the president. Key benefits like committeeappointments, leadership positions, and money for important projects in their home district may hinge onlegislators following the lead of the party. These pressures are particularly acute for the majority party,so named because it controls more than half the seats in one of the two chambers. The Speaker of theHouse and the Senate majority leader, the majority party’s congressional leaders, have significant tools attheir disposal to punish party members who defect on a particular vote. Finally, a member of the minority

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party must occasionally work with the opposition on some issues in order to accomplish any of his orher constituency’s goals. This is especially the case in the Senate, which is a super-majority institution.Sixty votes (of the 100 possible) are required to get anything accomplished, because Senate rules allowindividual members to block legislation via holds and filibusters. The only way to block the blocking is toinvoke cloture, a procedure calling for a vote on an issue, which takes 60 votes.

9.4 Divided Government and Partisan Polarization

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:• Discuss the problems and benefits of divided government• Define party polarization• List the main explanations for partisan polarization• Explain the implications of partisan polarization

In 1950, the American Political Science Association’s Committee on Political Parties (APSA) published anarticle offering a criticism of the current party system. The parties, it argued, were too similar. Distinct,cohesive political parties were critical for any well-functioning democracy. First, distinct parties offervoters clear policy choices at election time. Second, cohesive parties could deliver on their agenda, evenunder conditions of lower bipartisanship. The party that lost the election was also important to democracybecause it served as the “loyal opposition” that could keep a check on the excesses of the party in power.Finally, the paper suggested that voters could signal whether they preferred the vision of the currentleadership or of the opposition. This signaling would keep both parties accountable to the people and leadto a more effective government, better capable of meeting the country’s needs.

But, the APSA article continued, U.S. political parties of the day were lacking in this regard. Rarely didthey offer clear and distinct visions of the country’s future, and, on the rare occasions they did, they weretypically unable to enact major reforms once elected. Indeed, there was so much overlap between theparties when in office that it was difficult for voters to know whom they should hold accountable for badresults. The article concluded by advocating a set of reforms that, if implemented, would lead to moredistinct parties and better government. While this description of the major parties as being too similar mayhave been accurate in the 1950s; that is no longer the case.50

THE PROBLEM OF DIVIDED GOVERNMENT

The problem of majority versus minority politics is particularly acute under conditions of dividedgovernment. Divided government occurs when one or more houses of the legislature are controlled bythe party in opposition to the executive. Unified government occurs when the same party controls theexecutive and the legislature entirely. Divided government can pose considerable difficulties for both theoperations of the party and the government as a whole. It makes fulfilling campaign promises extremelydifficult, for instance, since the cooperation (or at least the agreement) of both Congress and the presidentis typically needed to pass legislation. Furthermore, one party can hardly claim credit for success whenthe other side has been a credible partner, or when nothing can be accomplished. Party loyalty may bechallenged too, because individual politicians might be forced to oppose their own party agenda if it willhelp their personal reelection bids.

Divided government can also be a threat to government operations, although its full impact remainsunclear.51 For example, when the divide between the parties is too great, government may shut down.A 1976 dispute between Republican president Gerald Ford and a Democrat-controlled Congress over theissue of funding for certain cabinet departments led to a ten-day shutdown of the government (althoughthe federal government did not cease to function entirely). But beginning in the 1980s, the interpretation



that Republican president Ronald Reagan’s attorney general gave to a nineteenth-century law required acomplete shutdown of federal government operations until a funding issue was resolved (Figure 9.13).52

Clearly, the parties’ willingness to work together and compromise can be a very good thing. However, thepast several decades have brought an increased prevalence of divided government. Since 1969, the U.S.electorate has sent the president a Congress of his own party in only seven of twenty-three congressionalelections, and during George W. Bush’s first administration, the Republican majority was so narrow thata combination of resignations and defections gave the Democrats control before the next election could beheld.

Over the short term, however, divided government can make for very contentious politics. A well-functioning government usually requires a certain level of responsiveness on the part of both the executiveand the legislative branches. This responsiveness is hard enough if government is unified under oneparty. During the presidency of Democrat Jimmy Carter (1977–1980), despite the fact that both housesof Congress were controlled by Democratic majorities, the government was shut down on five occasionsbecause of conflict between the executive and legislative branches.53 Shutdowns are even more likelywhen the president and at least one house of Congress are of opposite parties. During the presidency ofRonald Reagan, for example, the federal government shut down eight times; on seven of those occasions,the shutdown was caused by disagreements between Reagan and the Republican-controlled Senate on theone hand and the Democrats in the House on the other, over such issues as spending cuts, abortion rights,and civil rights.54 More such disputes and government shutdowns took place during the administrationsof George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, when different parties controlled Congress and thepresidency.

For the first few decades of the current pattern of divided government, the threat it posed to thegovernment appears to have been muted by a high degree of bipartisanship, or cooperation throughcompromise. Many pieces of legislation were passed in the 1960s and 1970s with reasonably high levelsof support from both parties. Most members of Congress had relatively moderate voting records, withregional differences within parties that made bipartisanship on many issues more likely.

Figure 9.13 In the early 1980s, Republican president Ronald Reagan (left) and Democratic Speaker of the HouseTip O’Neil (right) worked together to pass key pieces of legislation, even though they opposed each other on severalissues. (credit: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum)

For example, until the 1980s, northern and midwestern Republicans were often fairly progressive,supporting racial equality, workers’ rights, and farm subsidies. Southern Democrats were frequently quitesocially and racially conservative and were strong supporters of states’ rights. Cross-party cooperation onthese issues was fairly frequent. But in the past few decades, the number of moderates in both houses ofCongress has declined. This has made it more difficult for party leadership to work together on a rangeof important issues, and for members of the minority party in Congress to find policy agreement with anopposing party president.


THE IMPLICATIONS OF POLARIZATION

The past thirty years have brought a dramatic change in the relationship between the two parties asfewer conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans have been elected to office. As political moderates,or individuals with ideologies in the middle of the ideological spectrum, leave the political parties atall levels, the parties have grown farther apart ideologically, a result called party polarization. In otherwords, at least organizationally and in government, Republicans and Democrats have become increasinglydissimilar from one another (Figure 9.14). In the party-in-government, this means fewer members ofCongress have mixed voting records; instead they vote far more consistently on issues and are far morelikely to side with their party leadership.55 It also means a growing number of moderate voters aren’tparticipating in party politics. Either they are becoming independents, or they are participating only in thegeneral election and are therefore not helping select party candidates in primaries.

Figure 9.14 The number of moderates has dropped since 1973 as both parties have moved toward ideologicalextremes.

What is most interesting about this shift to increasingly polarized parties is that it does not appear tohave happened as a result of the structural reforms recommended by APSA. Rather, it has happenedbecause moderate politicians have simply found it harder and harder to win elections. There are manyconflicting theories about the causes of polarization, some of which we discuss below. But whatever itsorigin, party polarization in the United States does not appear to have had the net positive effects thatthe APSA committee was hoping for. With the exception of providing voters with more distinct choices,positives of polarization are hard to find. The negative impacts are many. For one thing, rather thanreducing interparty conflict, polarization appears to have only amplified it. For example, the RepublicanParty (or the GOP, standing for Grand Old Party) has historically been a coalition of two key andoverlapping factions: pro-business rightists and social conservatives. The GOP has held the coalition ofthese two groups together by opposing programs designed to redistribute wealth (and advocating small



government) while at the same time arguing for laws preferred by conservative Christians. But it wasalso willing to compromise with pro-business Democrats, often at the expense of social issues, if it meantprotecting long-term business interests.

Recently, however, a new voice has emerged that has allied itself with the Republican Party. Born in partfrom an older third-party movement known as the Libertarian Party, the Tea Party is more hostile togovernment and views government intervention in all forms, and especially taxation and the regulation ofbusiness, as a threat to capitalism and democracy. It is less willing to tolerate interventions in the marketplace, even when they are designed to protect the markets themselves. Although an anti-tax faction withinthe Republican Party has existed for some time, some factions of the Tea Party movement are also activeat the intersection of religious liberty and social issues, especially in opposing such initiatives as same-sexmarriage and abortion rights.56 The Tea Party has argued that government, both directly and by neglect, isthreatening the ability of evangelicals to observe their moral obligations, including practices some perceiveas endorsing social exclusion.

Although the Tea Party is a movement and not a political party, 86 percent of Tea Party members whovoted in 2012 cast their votes for Republicans.57 Some members of the Republican Party are closelyaffiliated with the movement, and before the 2012 elections, Tea Party activist Grover Norquist exactedpromises from many Republicans in Congress that they would oppose any bill that sought to raise taxes.58

The inflexibility of Tea Party members has led to tense floor debates and was ultimately responsible forthe 2014 primary defeat of Republican majority leader Eric Cantor and the 2015 resignation of the sittingSpeaker of the House John Boehner. In 2015, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, andTed Cruz, all of whom were Republican presidential candidates, signed Norquist’s pledge as well (Figure9.15).

Figure 9.15 Vying for the Republican nomination, 2016 presidential candidates Ted Cruz (a) and John Kasich (b),like many other Republicans, signed a pledge not to raise taxes if elected.

Movements on the left have also arisen. The Occupy Wall Street movement was born of the government’sresponse to the Great Recession of 2008 and its assistance to endangered financial institutions, providedthrough the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP (Figure 9.16). The Occupy Movement believed therecession was caused by a failure of the government to properly regulate the banking industry. The


Occupiers further maintained that the government moved swiftly to protect the banking industry fromthe worst of the recession but largely failed to protect the average person, thereby worsening the growingeconomic inequality in the United States.

Figure 9.16 On September 30, 2011, Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to the headquarters of the New YorkPolice Department to protest police brutality that occurred in response to the movement’s occupation of Zuccotti Parkin Lower Manhattan. (credit: modification of work by David Shankbone)

While the Occupy Movement itself has largely fizzled, the anti-business sentiment to which it gavevoice continues within the Democratic Party, and many Democrats have proclaimed their support forthe movement and its ideals, if not for its tactics.59 Champions of the left wing of the Democratic Party,however, such as presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator ElizabethWarren, have ensured that the Occupy Movement’s calls for more social spending and higher taxes on thewealthy remain a prominent part of the national debate. Their popularity, and the growing visibility ofrace issues in the United States, have helped sustain the left wing of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders’presidential run made these topics and causes even more salient, especially among younger voters. Todate, however, the Occupy Movement has had fewer electoral effects than has the Tea Party. Yet, asmanifested in Sanders’ candidacy, it has the potential to affect races at lower levels in the 2016 nationalelections.

Unfortunately, party factions haven’t been the only result of party polarization. By most measures, the U.S.government in general and Congress in particular have become less effective in recent years. Congresshas passed fewer pieces of legislation, confirmed fewer appointees, and been less effective at handlingthe national purse than in recent memory. If we define effectiveness as legislative productivity, the106th Congress (1999–2000) passed 463 pieces of substantive legislation (not including commemorativelegislation, such as bills proclaiming an official doughnut of the United States). The 107th Congress(2000–2001) passed 294 such pieces of legislation. By 2013–2014, the total had fallen to 212.60

Perhaps the clearest sign of Congress’ ineffectiveness is that the threat of government shutdown hasbecome a constant. Shutdowns occur when Congress and the president are unable to authorize andappropriate funds before the current budget runs out. This is now an annual problem. Relations betweenthe two parties became so bad that financial markets were sent into turmoil in 2014 when Congress failedto increase the government’s line of credit before a key deadline, thus threatening a U.S. governmentdefault on its loans. While any particular trend can be the result of multiple factors, the decline of keymeasures of institutional confidence and trust suggest the negative impact of polarization. Public approval



ratings for Congress have been near single digits for several years, and a poll taken in February 2016revealed that only 11 percent of respondents thought Congress was doing a “good or excellent job.”61

President Obama’s average approval rating has remained low, despite an overall trend of economicgrowth since the end of the 2008 recession.62 Typically, economic conditions are a significant driver ofpresidential approval, suggesting the negative effect of partisanship on presidential approval.

THE CAUSES OF POLARIZATION

Scholars agree that some degree of polarization is occurring in the United States, even if some contend itis only at the elite level. But they are less certain about exactly why, or how, polarization has become sucha mainstay of American politics. Several conflicting theories have been offered. The first and perhaps bestargument is that polarization is a party-in-government phenomenon driven by a decades-long sorting ofthe voting public, or a change in party allegiance in response to shifts in party position.63 According tothe sorting thesis, before the 1950s, voters were mostly concerned with state-level party positions ratherthan national party concerns. Since parties are bottom-up institutions, this meant local issues dominatedelections; it also meant national-level politicians typically paid more attention to local problems than tonational party politics.

But over the past several decades, voters have started identifying more with national-level party politics,and they began to demand their elected representatives become more attentive to national party positions.As a result, they have become more likely to pick parties that consistently represent national ideals, aremore consistent in their candidate selection, and are more willing to elect office-holders likely to followtheir party’s national agenda. One example of the way social change led to party sorting revolves aroundrace.

The Democratic Party returned to national power in the 1930s largely as the result of a coalition amonglow socio-economic status voters in northern and midwestern cities. These new Democratic voters werereligiously and ethnically more diverse than the mostly white, mostly Protestant voters who supportedRepublicans. But the southern United States (often called the “Solid South”) had been largely dominatedby Democratic politicians since the Civil War. These politicians agreed with other Democrats on mostissues, but they were more evangelical in their religious beliefs and less tolerant on racial matters. Thefederal nature of the United States meant that Democrats in other parts of the country were free toseek alliances with minorities in their states. But in the South, African Americans were still largelydisenfranchised well after Franklin Roosevelt had brought other groups into the Democratic tent.

The Democratic alliance worked relatively well through the 1930s and 1940s when post-Depression politicsrevolved around supporting farmers and helping the unemployed. But in the late 1950s and early 1960s,social issues became increasingly prominent in national politics. Southern Democrats, who had supportedgiving the federal government authority for economic redistribution, began to resist calls for those powersto be used to restructure society. Many of these Democrats broke away from the party only to find a homeamong Republicans, who were willing to help promote smaller national government and greater states’rights.64 This shift was largely completed with the rise of the evangelical movement in politics, when itshepherded its supporters away from Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Christian, to Ronald Reagan in the1980 presidential election.

At the same time social issues were turning the Solid South towards the Republican Party, they werehaving the opposite effect in the North and West. Moderate Republicans, who had been championsof racial equality since the time of Lincoln, worked with Democrats to achieve social reform. TheseRepublicans found it increasing difficult to remain in their party as it began to adjust to the growing powerof the small government–states’ rights movement. A good example was Senator Arlen Specter, a moderateRepublican who represented Pennsylvania and ultimately switched to become a Democrat before the endof his political career.

A second possible culprit in increased polarization is the impact of technology on the public square. Beforethe 1950s, most people got their news from regional newspapers and local radio stations. While some


national programming did exist, most editorial control was in the hands of local publishers and editorialboards. These groups served as a filter of sorts as they tried to meet the demands of local markets.

As described in detail in the media chapter, the advent of television changed that. Television was apowerful tool, with national news and editorial content that provided the same message across thecountry. All viewers saw the same images of the women’s rights movement and the war in Vietnam. Theexpansion of news coverage to cable, and the consolidation of local news providers into big corporateconglomerates, amplified this nationalization. Average citizens were just as likely to learn what it meantto be a Republican from a politician in another state as from one in their own, and national news coveragemade it much more difficult for politicians to run away from their votes. The information explosionthat followed the heyday of network TV by way of cable, the Internet, and blogs has furthered thisnationalization trend.

A final possible cause for polarization is the increasing sophistication of gerrymandering, or themanipulation of legislative districts in an attempt to favor a particular candidate (Figure 9.17). Accordingto the gerrymandering thesis, the more moderate or heterogeneous a voting district, the more moderatethe politician’s behavior once in office. Taking extreme or one-sided positions on a large number of issueswould be hazardous for a member who needs to build a diverse electoral coalition. But if the district hasbeen drawn to favor a particular group, it now is necessary for the elected official to serve only the portionof the constituency that dominates.

Figure 9.17 This cartoon, which inspired the term gerrymander, was printed in the Boston Gazette on March 26,1812, after the Massachusetts legislature redistricted the state to favor the party of the sitting governor, ElbridgeGerry.

Gerrymandering is a centuries-old practice. There has always been an incentive for legislative bodies todraw districts in such a way that sitting legislators have the best chance of keeping their jobs. But changesin law and technology have transformed gerrymandering from a crude art into a science. The first advancecame with the introduction of the “one-person-one-vote” principle by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962.Before then, it was common for many states to practice redistricting, or redrawing of their electoral maps,only if they gained or lost seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. This can happen once every ten years



as a result of a constitutionally mandated reapportionment process, in which the number of House seatsgiven to each state is adjusted to account for population changes.

But if there was no change in the number of seats, there was little incentive to shift district boundaries.After all, if a legislator had won election based on the current map, any change to the map could makelosing seats more likely. Even when reapportionment led to new maps, most legislators were moreconcerned with protecting their own seats than with increasing the number of seats held by their party.As a result, some districts had gone decades without significant adjustment, even as the U.S. populationchanged from largely rural to largely urban. By the early 1960s, some electoral districts had populationsseveral times greater than those of their more rural neighbors.

However, in its one-person-one-vote decision in Reynolds v. Simms (1964), the Supreme Court arguedthat everyone’s vote should count roughly the same regardless of where they lived.65 Districts had to beadjusted so they would have roughly equal populations. Several states therefore had to make dramaticchanges to their electoral maps during the next two redistricting cycles (1970–1972 and 1980–1982). Mapdesigners, no longer certain how to protect individual party members, changed tactics to try and createsafe seats so members of their party could be assured of winning by a comfortable margin. The basic ruleof thumb was that designers sought to draw districts in which their preferred party had a 55 percent orbetter chance of winning a given district, regardless of which candidate the party nominated.

Of course, many early efforts at post-Reynolds gerrymandering were crude since map designers had nogood way of knowing exactly where partisans lived. At best, designers might have a rough idea of votingpatterns between precincts, but they lacked the ability to know voting patterns in individual blocks orneighborhoods. They also had to contend with the inherent mobility of the U.S. population, which meantthe most carefully drawn maps could be obsolete just a few years later. Designers were often forced to usecrude proxies for party, such as race or the socio-economic status of a neighborhood (Figure 9.18). Somemaps were so crude they were ruled unconstitutionally discriminatory by the courts.


Figure 9.18 Examples of gerrymandering in Texas, where the Republican-controlled legislature redrew Housedistricts to reduce the number of Democratic seats by combining voters in Austin with those near the border, severalhundred miles away. Today, Austin is represented by six different congressional representatives.

Proponents of the gerrymandering thesis point out that the decline in the number of moderate votersbegan during this period of increased redistricting. But it wasn’t until later, they argue, that the real effectscould be seen. A second advance in redistricting, via computer-aided map making, truly transformedgerrymandering into a science. Refined computing technology, the ability to collect data about potentialvoters, and the use of advanced algorithms have given map makers a good deal of certainty about where toplace district boundaries to best predetermine the outcomes. These factors also provided better predictionsabout future population shifts, making the effects of gerrymandering more stable over time. Proponentsargue that this increased efficiency in map drawing has led to the disappearance of moderates in Congress.

According to political scientist Nolan McCarty, there is little evidence to support the redistrictinghypothesis alone. First, he argues, the Senate has become polarized just as the House of Representativeshas, but people vote for Senators on a statewide basis. There are no gerrymandered voting districts inelections for senators. Research showing that more partisan candidates first win election to the Housebefore then running successfully for the Senate, however, helps us understand how the Senate can alsobecome partisan.66 Furthermore, states like Wyoming and Vermont, which have only one Representativeand thus elect House members on a statewide basis as well, have consistently elected people at the far endsof the ideological spectrum.67 Redistricting did contribute to polarization in the House of Representatives,but it took place largely in districts that had undergone significant change.68

Furthermore, polarization has been occurring throughout the country, but the use of increasinglypolarized district design has not. While some states have seen an increase in these practices, many stateswere already largely dominated by a single party (such as in the Solid South) but still elected moderaterepresentatives. Some parts of the country have remained closely divided between the two parties, makingovert attempts at gerrymandering difficult. But when coupled with the sorting phenomenon discussedabove, redistricting probably is contributing to polarization, if only at the margins.



The Politics of Redistricting

Voters in a number of states have become so worried about the problem of gerrymandering that they have triedto deny their legislatures the ability to draw district boundaries. The hope is that by taking this power away fromwhichever party controls the state legislature, voters can ensure more competitive districts and fairer electoraloutcomes.

In 2000, voters in Arizona approved a referendum that created an independent state commission responsiblefor drafting legislative districts. But the Arizona legislature fought back against the creation of the commission,filing a lawsuit that claimed only the legislature had the constitutional right to draw districts. Legislators askedthe courts to overturn the popular referendum and end the operation of the redistricting commission. However,the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the authority of the independent commission in a 5–4 decision titled ArizonaState Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (2015).69

Currently, only five states use fully independent commissions—ones that do not include legislators or otherelected officials—to draw the lines for both state legislative and congressional districts. These states areArizona, California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. In Florida, the League of Women Voters and CommonCause challenged a new voting districts map supported by state Republicans, because they did not believe itfulfilled the requirements of amendments made to the state constitution in 2010 requiring that voting districtsnot favor any political party or incumbent.70

Do you think redistricting is a partisan issue? Should commissions draw districts instead of legislators? Ifcommissions are given this task, who should serve on them?

Think you have what it takes to gerrymander a district? Play the redistricting game(https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29redistrictgam) and see whether you can find newways to help out old politicians.

Finding a Middle Ground

Link to Learning


https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29redistrictgam

https://openstaxcollege.org/l/29redistrictgam

bipartisanship

critical election

divided government

first-past-the-post

gerrymandering

majoritarian voting

majority party

minority party

moderate

party identifiers

party organization

party platform

party polarization

party realignment

party-in-government

party-in-the-electorate

personal politics

plurality voting

political machine

political parties

precinct

proportional representation

Key Terms

a process of cooperation through compromise

an election that represents a sudden, clear, and long-term shift in voter allegiances

a condition in which one or more houses of the legislature is controlled by the partyin opposition to the executive

a system in which the winner of an election is the candidate who wins the greatestnumber of votes cast, also known as plurality voting

the manipulation of legislative districts in an attempt to favor a particular candidate

a type of election in which the winning candidate must receive at least 50 percent ofthe votes, even if a run-off election is required

the legislative party with over half the seats in a legislative body, and thus significantpower to control the agenda

the legislative party with less than half the seats in a legislative body

an individual who falls in the middle of the ideological spectrum

individuals who represent themselves in public as being part of a party

the formal structure of the political party and the active members responsible forcoordinating party behavior and supporting party candidates

the collection of a party’s positions on issues it considers politically important

the shift of party positions from moderate towards ideological extremes

a shifting of party alliances within the electorate

party identifiers who have been elected to office and are responsible for fulfillingthe party’s promises

members of the voting public who consider themselves part of a political party orwho consistently prefer the candidates of one party over the other

a political style that focuses on building direct relationships with voters rather than onpromoting specific issues

the election rule by which the candidate with the most votes wins, regardless of voteshare

an organization that secures votes for a party’s candidates or supports the party inother ways, usually in exchange for political favors such as a job in government

organizations made up of groups of people with similar interests that try to directlyinfluence public policy through their members who seek and hold public office

the lowest level of party organization, usually organized around neighborhoods

a party-based election rule in which the number of seats a party receives is afunction of the share of votes it receives in an election



reapportionment

redistricting

safe seat

sorting

third parties

two-party system

the reallocation of House seats between the states to account for population changes

the redrawing of electoral maps

a district drawn so members of a party can be assured of winning by a comfortable margin

the process in which voters change party allegiances in response to shifts in party position

political parties formed as an alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties, alsoknown as minor parties

a system in which two major parties win all or almost all elections

Summary

9.1 What Are Parties and How Did They Form?Political parties are vital to the operation of any democracy. Early U.S. political parties were formed bynational elites who disagreed over how to divide power between the national and state governments. Thesystem we have today, divided between Republicans and Democrats, had consolidated by 1860. A numberof minor parties have attempted to challenge the status quo, but they have largely failed to gain tractiondespite having an occasional impact on the national political scene.

9.2 The Two-Party SystemElectoral rules, such as the use of plurality voting, have helped turn the United States into a two-partysystem dominated by the Republicans and the Democrats. Several minor parties have attempted tochallenge the status quo, but usually they have only been spoilers that served to divide party coalitions.But this doesn’t mean the party system has always been stable; party coalitions have shifted several timesin the past two hundred years.

9.3 The Shape of Modern Political PartiesPolitical parties exist primarily as a means to help candidates get elected. The United States thus has arelatively loose system of party identification and a bottom-up approach to party organization structurebuilt around elections. Lower levels, such as the precinct or county, take on the primary responsibilityfor voter registration and mobilization, whereas the higher state and national levels are responsiblefor electing major candidates and shaping party ideology. The party in government is responsible forimplementing the policies on which its candidates run, but elected officials also worry about winningreelection.

9.4 Divided Government and Partisan PolarizationA divided government makes it difficult for elected officials to achieve their policy goals. This problem hasgotten worse as U.S. political parties have become increasingly polarized over the past several decades.They are both more likely to fight with each other and more internally divided than just a few decadesago. Some possible causes include sorting and improved gerrymandering, although neither alone offersa completely satisfactory explanation. But whatever the cause, polarization is having negative short-termconsequences on American politics.


Review Questions

1. Which supporter of federalism warned peopleabout the dangers of political parties?

a. John Adamsb. Alexander Hamiltonc. James Madisond. George Washington

2. Which of the following was not a third-partychallenger?

a. Whig Partyb. Progressive Partyc. Dixiecratsd. Green Party

3. Why were the early U.S. political partiesformed?

4. What techniques led the Democratic Party tonational prominence in the 1830s through 1850s?

5. In which type of electoral system do votersselect the party of their choice rather than anindividual candidate?

a. proportional representationb. first-past-the-postc. plurality votingd. majoritarian voting

6. Which of the following does not represent amajor contributing factor in party realignment?

a. demographic shiftsb. changes in key issuesc. changes in party strategiesd. third parties

7. What impact, if any, do third parties typicallyhave on U.S. elections?

8. In what ways do political parties collude withstate and local government to prevent the rise ofnew parties?

9. Which level of party organization is mostresponsible for helping the party’s nominee winthe presidency?

a. precinctb. countyc. stated. national

10. How do members of the party organizationdiffer from party identifiers? What role does eachplay in the party as a whole?

11. Why is winning votes so important topolitical parties? How does the need to winelections affect party structures?

12. What are the positives and negatives ofpartisan polarization?

13. What is the sorting thesis, and what does itsuggest as the cause of party polarization?

14. Does gerrymandering lead to increasedpolarization?

15. How have the Tea Party and Occupy WallStreet Movement affected partisan politics?

Critical Thinking Questions

16. Is it possible for a serious third party to emerge in the United States, positioned ideologically betweenthe Democrats on the left and the Republicans on the right? Why or why not?

17. In what ways are political parties of the people and in what ways might they be more responsive toelites?

18. If you were required to become active in some aspect of a political party, what activity and level ofparty organization would you choose and why?

19. Is it preferable for the U.S. government to have unified party control or divided government? Why?



20. In general, do parties make the business of government easier or harder to accomplish?

Suggestions for Further Study

Aldrich, John. 1995. Why Parties? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Brewer, Mark D., and L. Sandy Maisel. 2013. The Parties Respond: Changes in American Parties and Campaigns,5th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Brunell, Thomas L. 2008. Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America. NewYork: Routledge Press.

Cox, Gary W., and Jonathan Katz. 2002. Elbridge Gerry’s Salamander: The Electoral Consequences of theReapportionment Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Fiorina, Morris P. 2006. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Hershey, Marjorie Randon. 2014. Party Politics in America, 16th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 1995. Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes towardsAmerican Political Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Keith, Bruce E., et al. 1992. The Myth of the Independent Voter. Berkeley, CA. Berkeley University Press.

McCarthy, Nolan, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal. 2008. Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology andUnequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Noel, Hans. 2014. Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Sinclair, Barbara. 2005. Party Wars. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.


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